Disney recently set up “Ad Lab” in Texas, USA to perform joint research projects with advertising professionals and agency executives to better understand the effectiveness of advertising in new media environments. Dr. Duane Varan, the lab's executive director, said the ultimate aim of Ad Lab is “to discover ‘new laws of truth’ about advertising impact.”1

The difference between advertising and branding is often misunderstood in the business world. Essentially, advertising is one way to communicate about a brand to increase brand awareness and help define the brand in the mind of the public. Since advertising can serve to reinforce brand attributes or to undermine them, the impact and reception of ad campaigns on consumer groups has important implications for brand building. Here again, market and consumer research is of utmost importance, especially when operating in different cultural contexts. (See our previous article on Advertising Decoded and Market and Consumer Insights)

Although Disney aims to explore the universal laws in multimedia advertising and promotion, they will also discover key components of effective brand communication through their market research. By understanding how consumers react and respond to different ad forms and content, Ad Lab will become aware of the elements of successful ads as well as drawbacks to be avoided. These research results will be helpful for the development of companies’ overall brand strategies as well as marketing and PR strategies.

Ad Lab’s research results that are not proprietary for specific clients are intended to be shared with the industry. Hopefully relevant information will be shared with branding practitioners to uncover insights on how to communicate about brands over new media platforms. (See Interactive media: the New Golden Goose of Branding?)

1http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3ide843f7bf07c511f73d188f5907a10e6